Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: I’d like to call the meeting to order since we have our human services folks coming out from their meeting. Give everybody a moment to sit.
When in doubt, blame the city manager. That’s part of the job.
I’d like to call this meeting of the Des Moines Citizens Advisory Board for Wednesday, March 25th to order. It is about 6:02. I want to give everybody a reminder to please remember to turn on the microphones and move the microphones in front of people. We’ve heard from several people that it’s almost impossible to hear the comments unless the microphones are on and in front of the person who’s talking. So we will help you remember to do that.
Roll call. Let’s just go around the table.
Tara Vaughan [Staff Liaison]: Tara Vaughan, staff liaison.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Katherine Caffrey, city manager.
[Members, in sequence]: Aileen Evans, Senior Services. Lisa Franz, Redondo. Alyson Chapin, North Central. Bettina Kerry, Marina District. Victoria Andrews, at large. Corrine Anderson Ketchmark, at large, Human Services. Diane Hoyer, at large. Jim Lamperello, at large. MaryEllen Laird, at large. Bill Linscott, Marina Tenants. Jeff Crompe, at large, Arts Committee. Mackenzie Meyers, Business, Arts Committee. Charlene Balcazo, Business, Arts Committee. Eddy Duggar, Central, Arts Committee.
Gene Achziger [Deputy Mayor]: Deputy Mayor.
Robyn Desimone [Council Member]: Council member.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: And Harry Steinmetz, council member and chair. I really want to congratulate everybody on wonderful use of that microphone. I know everybody will be heard.
We did have one email from Susan White. She has conflicting meetings and asked that she be excused. Do we have a motion?
Victoria moved. Seconded by Bettina. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes.
Jeff, a quick one — Randy Richards texted me and said he sent you a note that he was unable to come because of a medical issue.
Jeff Crompe: Okay. But I don’t know where he sent it.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: Thank you for sharing that. Do we have a motion to excuse Randy? Moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes.
And Charlene — Eddie was just telling me that Rick’s in Mexico, so we should excuse him as well.
I move that we excuse Rick Lacock — having much more fun and experiencing much better weather than we are. Moved and seconded. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes. We have three excused absences. Thank you.
The first agenda item is approval of the minutes of the February 25th CAB meeting. Do we have a motion?
Jeff Crompe: I move to approve the minutes from the CAB meeting.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: Moved by Jeff, seconded by Bill Linscott. Is there any discussion? Any corrections anybody wants to make to the minutes? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Hearing none, it passes.
The next item is the strategic plan update by our city manager.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Hi everybody. I think it’s been a couple months since I came and gave you an update. Today I wanted to go through briefly the results from the public engagement and then talk about the direction we’re headed since we had the council retreat at the end of February.
Some of you may have been able to make the February presentation we did to the city council. Colleen Gantz — your former CAB member, now planning commissioner — she joined me on February 12th and we gave a presentation to the council focused on the CAB’s efforts to help with the engagement, and I also went through a couple of the brief highlights of the feedback we heard. So if you came to that meeting, I am going to repeat some of it. Sorry, Char. But there’s also new information.
To remind everybody, our engagement process was pretty extensive. It was a mixture of council interviews and employee survey, focus groups — which many of you participated in — the town hall, which many of you were at, and of course the survey, which you really helped us spread the word on. It was a pretty wide swath. CAB was everywhere — popups at the holiday market, the food bank, the library branches, which was terrific. That was the first time we’ve really leaned into those two branches. The holiday tree lighting, you all did briefings at some of the senior homes like Wesley and Judson Park. There were lots of emails sent out — much kudos to this group.
We extensively advertised the community survey. It was very important to the council and to this group that we make sure we’re reaching out to folks in our community we don’t normally hear from. You all were at the food bank. The library branches are a great way to do that. On the staff side, we worked with Highline Schools to hand out cards about the survey in five or six different languages to the English as a second language teaching assistants, hopefully so they would pass that out to families in this community that maybe don’t typically engage on that front.
As you all know, we got great participation — over a thousand surveys, which for a community of 32–33,000 is amazing. We also got some other great responses, and in the city council member interviews we were actually able to touch base with both the prior council and new council members. That was one of the first things council member Desimone did when she was elected.
Oh yeah, and there’s a great action shot. Rick looks relaxed — like he was already in Mexico in his mind.
You all were at the town hall, so we don’t need to talk about that event, but it was well attended, especially for being in December, rainy and dark.
Some of the key things that came out — well, first let me say I’m going to go over the highlights. In my city manager’s report a few weeks ago, I linked the Sense of Stakeholder report. If you’d like that, just tell me and I’ll email it to you. It was in the city manager’s report maybe two or three Fridays ago — the first little article was about the strategic plan, and at the bottom there’s a link to a 30-page report called the Sense of Stakeholder Report that goes much more in depth.
Some of the highlights: the strengths we really heard from all that engagement were what we already know. The community is very involved here. They are very passionate. They love to tell you what they think — which is both a blessing and sometimes less of a blessing. We got a lot of great comments about the location — whether it’s being on the waterfront, the proximity between Seattle and Tacoma, or even the proximity to the airport. Location came up a lot. And of course many comments on the waterfront and natural beauty here.
This was not planned by me, but there were actually a fair amount of comments from people saying they were pleased with city leadership — some good shout-outs to staff, which is always welcome.
Because part of our engagement was actually to our employees — those are the people that will be doing the work in the strategic plan, so it’s good to get their input. There were a lot of comments, which is true, about how the organization is very adaptable and resourceful. That’s probably because necessity is the mother of invention. There are a lot of people who wear four hats. It’s really helped the organization be very nimble and lean into adapting to what we need now.
You all probably recall the town hall where people were putting in how they felt about things in real time. This was a great word cloud about “What I Love About Des Moines.”
McKenzie Meyers: I think Quarter Deck was even on there a little bit.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: You still got the very specific shout-out right next to Marina. Yeah, Quarter Deck. Yeah.
The main challenges we heard — which I think will ring true to you — is a real desire for a stronger downtown or stronger business community, whether it’s downtown or Pac Highway. A desire for more vitality. There was a lot of recognition from the community of our ongoing financial struggles and how we really get our arms around that. There were a lot of comments about the airport and how much that impacts people’s daily life — yet other people love being close, so it cuts both ways. There were definitely challenges about managing community expectations.
What I think this is really about: we are very lean staff-wise and very resource-constrained, yet residents — and that’s not their problem, that’s our problem — still want to see a high level of service, beautification efforts, things that become community hot-button issues. It is challenging for us to manage that within our resources. And then of course, in general, resources and workforce staffing are a challenge.
It was very important to people that as the city is growing and evolving and changing, we make sure to protect the things that people love so much about living in Des Moines — much of that was about the environment and aesthetics.
These are the opportunities — if you want to dive deeper the report goes much further into all of them. These were really the main things that came up through the whole public engagement effort as areas where we need to either expand because it’s already going pretty well, or where we need to make it more of a priority.
Something I thought was interesting is both public safety and transportation and mobility. Not to say that there’s not crime in this community, but the comments weren’t “I feel unsafe.” They were more about “I’d like more traffic control” or “as a pedestrian, I don’t feel safe walking because there aren’t sidewalks.” So it was a different bent on public safety than when you typically hear crime concerns. It was much more focused on roadway safety, whether you’re a pedestrian, a biker, or in a car.
Big picture, what we saw come from this — looking at council feedback, staff, and the community — was a desire to really focus on ensuring we have a vibrant community, a lot about a thriving downtown. There was a lot about the marina — very focused on that part of the city, wanting to see it more active, more vibrant, more alive. A lot of comments about natural resources, parks, trails. Residents made clear they want to continue building a stronger relationship with the city.
On the survey — I specifically added this — there was a question about whether you feel optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Des Moines. I was really pleased to see that by and large people felt optimistic. The reason we added that question is because I think we’re at a point in this community where I frequently hear a lot of past upset feelings. Those are really valid and important to hear, but asking how you feel about the future captures your mindset now. We felt it was important to ask that.
Some other themes were again public safety — more officers, but also safer streets — and that again was about how we get around this community. And of course big themes on our finances and making sure we get out of this habit of barely making it.
All of that went into a couple of things. In January we had a staff retreat where senior staff got together and we took a first crack at this — taking all the public engagement feedback and, with our facilitation team, the consultant from Raftelis, we spent a day together and left with an idea of what our five or six big goals were. The official term is “strategic priorities,” but really they’re the big areas we need to focus on.
We took that initial work, and then the city council gave us a day and a half of their time — which is not a small ask. We had a day-and-a-half-long retreat with them. They went through a similar process. We showed them here’s what staff’s first stab at these strategic priorities are — how do they land? You’re always a little nervous. The good thing is they literally changed two words on a title and that was it. That means we’re really aligned. That felt really positive.
Before I get into what those are — where this goes is it will result in a plan that is the list of big priorities for the next three to five years, and underneath that there will be many, many specific projects, action items, studies, and programs that are how staff are going to do it. I do think it’s important to recognize the capacity our organization has to do this work. This is not meant to deter the council or myself from adding lots of things to that to-do list, but it is a recognition of reality.
We spend 85% of our time on daily operations — filling potholes, responding to calls for service, mowing the right of way. 85% of the time. It’s a pretty small sliver that’s really available for some of these incredibly important initiatives. And really the people who work on these are typically department heads and myself. We felt it was important to show the council this — and in turn to show you all — which is the reality that we’re going to have some really big, ambitious goals, and we’re talking about maybe eight people in our organization who work on them, on top of being working managers.
The big priority areas — on the left side of the screen — they are: financial stability, economic vitality, public safety, connected and engaged community — the council revised that last one — natural and built environment, and organizational excellence. And how those really work together: public safety, connected community, natural and built environment, and organizational excellence are the foundation for simply being a good organization that’s doing what it needs to do. Organizational excellence is at the bottom of the pyramid because that is just hiring good workforce, retaining good employees, all that stuff that is boring but is what makes the city actually operate.
But really the top two things — which were definitely the highest priorities from the council — are financial stability and economic vitality. Everything on that pyramid is important, but those two I definitely left the council retreat very clear are the most important. If we can get those two things right, they really are transformational for this community.
So what happens next: right now staff are meeting next week to start working out what it really means to accomplish economic vitality. The council identified these six areas and we have a definition of what that really means to them, but now staff are working to come up with the initiatives we’re going to do over the next three to five years. We’re getting together next week for that. Then we will bring the council back a draft of the strategic plan on May 7th at the council meeting, get their feedback, and then it will come to them probably in May or June for adoption. At that point, it’ll be my job to really share that with the community — any neighborhood group that’ll have me, Rotary, things like that.
With that, I’m happy to answer any questions.
Karen [Member]: So typically strategic plans have action items. Are you at that place yet?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Yes, that’s the stuff staff are getting together — the real initiatives to move things forward.
Victoria Andrews: You ran through the dates pretty quickly. When in June are you going to be starting your PR campaign?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: I don’t have that date yet. May 7th is when the draft is presented to council. Assuming they have only minor edits, I’m going to bring it back hopefully in June for adoption. I don’t know a date yet because I need to know how many edits or changes they want. After that we’ll really get started trying to get the word out.
[Member]: My concern is about the demographic makeup of the survey respondents and how public safety may or may not actually reflect 100% of the population — knowing what goes on toward Pac Highway. Downtown Des Moines is relatively safe. I can walk downtown and feel safe, but the further you get up, I just wonder if we got a representative respondent makeup.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: If you look at that report I referenced earlier, it does break down the demographics. I will say, despite our very valiant effort to really get outreach from areas we don’t normally hear from — I listed all those ways — we did not receive a single survey that was not in English. It continued to really be the people we hear from. But I am really proud of how creatively you all worked to really try and remove those barriers.
To your comment on public safety, I think you’re not really doing your job as a city manager if you don’t realize that crime is a huge deterrent to financial stability and economic vitality. So don’t take my comment to mean we’re not hiring any more police. It’s more that I thought it was very interesting that what we heard a lot about was how people are getting around the community. That is public safety, but in a different way.
[Member]: If we’re hearing from a lot of the regular people, that makes intuitive sense — that it’s about getting around the community, sidewalks, transportation, walking. Because I don’t think we’re hearing a lot from the citizens who are affected the most by crime. And that’s the point. We have to keep that in mind.
Jim [Member]: I thought the breakdown of city staff time was very interesting. We hear a lot about the financial resources of the city and less about the staff resources, where there’s probably a thousand cool things we want to do and one person to do them. That’s a really interesting perspective that can add to, you know, when we hear “why can’t we do this cool thing?” and the answer is we don’t have the people to do it — not just a financial thing.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Thanks, because I actually wasn’t even sure to include that slide. I don’t want it to sound like woe is us. But genuinely, everything on that action plan is going to be done by eight, maybe ten people — because everybody else has an actual job that they are fully committed to.
Charlene [Member]: I’m surprised the survey respondents were all in English because we did make such a big effort. But on that same vein, I felt when I did my time at the food bank that they were genuinely impressed by being included. Even though they may not have responded, they know that we care. I think our neighborhood representation represents those concerns even for them — they know we have their best interests, even though it’s the same voice regularly.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: On the focus groups, which quite a few of you were at, we actually did include some service providers. The food bank participated, Lighthouse participated. So even if it wasn’t the actual end user of those services, we made a point of inviting those organizations so that they could help amplify that voice.
Bill Linscott: This is great — this is kind of the tier one plan. From here, what’s the rollout of the rest of the plans? I’m used to seeing a system with a supporting document tree. Out of this, when it’s finally adopted, how do the other plans fit in?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: I think it’ll take some time. The most immediate thing that will connect it to our work is we’re heading into the ’27–’28 budget, and we will be presenting the budget through the lens of those priorities. Additionally, departments will be submitting their budget requests justifying which of these priorities they’re addressing. That’s a quick way to immediately frame how what you’re doing is tackling one of those big items — and if it’s not, we should probably talk about whether it’s a great use of our time. Over time, the parks master plan will be looked at through the lens of those priorities. Council already has a whole litany of ideas they want to do to tackle the downtown issues. You’ll very quickly be seeing things coming out on that. All of our work will now be framed in terms of how it connects to this plan.
Karen [Member]: This goes back to what you were saying about different neighborhoods and different languages and the multicultural environment that Des Moines is — there probably needs to be continued data collection in terms of different groups. To me this was a beginning. That could easily enter into some additional data. This is all very exciting.
Bettina [Member]: The way the survey was set up, I believe Google Translate was available when someone was completing the survey. Would you even know that?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Yes. That ran through Raftelis, but we asked them — “Will you know if it was originally submitted in Spanish or whatever?” And they said yes, they would know that. And we did not get any that were translated in transmission to us.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: Thank you. Any more? Then we are moving on to item three, the discussion of draft ordinance 26-00009 regarding appointments to committees in the Citizens Advisory Board code.
As part of this discussion, the council wants your feedback. What we had talked about before was that the CAB wanted to give their own feedback, not have it translated through the council members that attend these meetings. As we’re going through this discussion, it might be a good first step if we figure out who wants to come tomorrow night and give the CAB feedback to the council about this draft ordinance.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: All right. Well, we went from something really exciting to your taste of being on the city council. I will say initially when I made this PowerPoint, Tara drafted all this — this is actually her day job, being a lawyer who writes code. By Jim’s point, that’s actually what she was hired to do. I originally had this PowerPoint with all the cited sections, and then I took it out because I thought if I were them I would want to stick a pen in my eyeball — “section 26.004 subsection A.” Although Tara’s like, “That is good. I spent time on that.” The lawyers like it. I took it all out.
So as you all know, about a year and a few months ago, we reorganized all these groups.
[Member]: I just wanted the discussion to start with — do we want to appoint somebody who’s planning on attending so they take really good notes?
[Member]: Is somebody coming tomorrow night anyway?
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: I thought they may want to know what we’re talking about first before they volunteer.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: I see some head nods. Okay. All righty.
So as you all know, we have restructured this group. It’s partially driven by staff resources and partially by — what can we support? Because there were so many of these committees. I definitely appreciate everybody’s willingness to go with something that has at times felt clunky while we’re trying to figure out roles. I have frequently heard from people — Jeff Crompe but many of you — that it’s not clear what they’re supposed to be doing.
Additionally, the council has created the planning commission, so we have a new body starting in April. It felt like the right time to look at the code to make sure it was cleaned up and that roles are genuinely clarified — so you know what your role is as a CAB board member, so that this can really be a fulfilling volunteer opportunity and you don’t feel like “what am I doing once a month when I go there.”
The goal — and if at the end of the presentation we’ve accomplished this, that will be success — is to really make sure you understand your role and where you add value. This actually applies to everybody on a city board or commission: planning commission, lodging tax advisory board, civil service. We want to make sure it’s very clear.
We also wanted to make sure — CAB-specific — that we create a consistent structure. We’ve gotten feedback that sometimes meetings feel productive, sometimes they don’t, and it’s not always clear how the subcommittees are supposed to move their work forward. We wanted to make that clear. We brought this to the council at the study session in March. It will be going for first reading tomorrow night and then a second reading. Council tomorrow could say “throw all this out” — I don’t anticipate that — but I want you to know this is not set in stone yet, which is why I think council member Steinmetz is looking to have somebody from CAB speak tomorrow night.
So let’s talk about what this is. When you’re talking about committees and staff: staff support all the committees including CAB by providing information and coordinating logistics, vendors, budgets. That is really staff’s role. We are also responsible for implementing council direction. And of course we provide a designated liaison — in this case, Tara. That liaison is there to help you. They are not your employee. Really the committees are advisory, so they focus on providing input, recommendations, ideas, and direction — and then staff execute on that.
Some things that have come up: all the boards and committees may function a little cleaner if they use established meeting procedures, basically Robert’s Rules, which you already do a little of when you make motions. I put “Robert’s Rules light.” At a future meeting we’re going to talk to you about that — you already do the making-motions thing, but how do you call for motions and votes and so on?
Councilmember Desimone said “oh, we have this great placemat” — they have a little cheat sheet up at the dais — and I’ve ordered all of you your own. That’s coming. Don’t worry about the Robert’s Rules thing, but we’re going to get a little bit of that formality in this group because it’s a really large group and it’s hard to always capture what happened here if we don’t have votes and such.
We have also implemented clear attendance expectations. If you have more than three absences, that person would be referred to the city council and they may choose to remove that board member. It’s not mandatory — it depends on the situation — but if you have more than three absences in a year, council will be made aware.
Jeff Crompe: Quick question — is that at our subcommittee meetings or the CAB meetings?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: The CAB meetings.
Council felt it was very important to ensure that all of these committees really have broad community representation and that we’re really trying to get new people on things. To that end, membership has now been limited to one committee per person at any given time. That’s why Colleen moved over to the planning commission — we’re getting new members. You can’t be on — oh, and Charlene — did I say Colleen? Did I say Charlene? I’m sorry.
[Member]: Charlene is still here. Colleen is going to planning.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: I’m sorry. Don’t tolerate that. Anyway, that was part of this as well.
We’ve also made clear that the city’s existing ethics standards will apply to this group, which includes ethics and conflicts of interest. We are also going to provide you all ethics training on an annual basis. It’ll just be at one of your normal meetings — a lawyer will probably do it. We’ll go through what we mean by conflicts of interest, what we mean by ethics, so everyone’s aware.
This is something I did at my old city and it really was helpful — sometimes it’s hard if these committees don’t have a good connection to the city council, and you don’t find out there’s not a good connection until something goes wrong. So we have put in a requirement that on an annual basis there will be a joint meeting between the CAB and the council, and a joint meeting between the council and the planning commission. That’ll be a great opportunity to get real dialogue — your group talks about things you’re working on, more than just your three council members are able to give you feedback, and council can also talk about the direction they’re headed. We think it’ll be very helpful.
So the rules I just went through are about all committees, but these things are specific to CAB. We’ve tried to clean up some language so the subcommittees have a defined area of focus. You have a redlined copy — you don’t need to look at it right now, but the changes that are being proposed are in there. We tried to make the role of some of the subcommittees a little clearer because we’ve heard there’s sometimes confusion on that.
[Member]: I hear us going between committees and subcommittees. I thought we were committees.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Same thing — it’s a language issue. The way it’s written in code: arts, senior services, and human services are subcommittees of the CAB, because the CAB is a committee or a board.
Victoria Andrews: At a previous meeting — I think it was the last one — once we changed our name to a board, underneath the board are our committees. And to make it more clear, I thought we all decided we were not going to be subcommittees anymore. We were going to be committees. So I’ve been taking notes: subcommittee, board, council should be committee, board, council. Is that not what everybody else understood?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: I do remember that. The thing is, this is a council-created board, so only council could change the name of subcommittees or the structure. This committee cannot change itself. Does that make sense?
Victoria Andrews: So will one of you move to change it? That would be the feedback we’re looking for tomorrow night.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: Currently still subcommittees — but as you just heard, that might be addressed tomorrow. If there’s a procedure to do that, then we definitely need to follow that procedure.
Jeff [Member]: We had the discussion earlier about attendance. Are we going to have to be careful about the language as far as whether or not we’re taking attendance at our level? That’s how it’s drafted now.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: This group will now be subject to the Open Public Meetings Act, which we sort of already are doing, but it isn’t actually prescribed in the code. Meetings are posted, we take attendance, they’re recorded and put on the website. The sub-committees don’t function like that. That was actually a big reason why we combined everything — we didn’t have the staff to set all that up with agendas and everything; it’s a lot of work staff-wise. So those groups kind of function independently. They’re not going to be subject to the Open Meetings Act. The idea is that you meet and then you report those things here, and that’s the transparency component.
When it came to attendance, how it’s currently drafted is that your attendance to CAB is what is counted, because we don’t go to your subcommittee meetings, so we don’t know who’s there and who’s not. If that’s a change that is desired, that’s feedback we can probably talk about, but it does add an extra layer of formality.
Charlene [Member]: I would like to say that we do run under Robert’s Rules at our meetings and we do take attendance and minutes. They’re available any time.
[Member]: What’s the definition of the difference between sub and committee? What’s the difference?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Other than the obvious one, that one is subsumed under something else — which is why we started with these being called subcommittees — I don’t really know functionally if there would be much difference in changing the name from subcommittee, because you’d still be subsumed under CAB.
Bill Linscott: Just to back up — I thought there was a difference: the Open Public Meetings Act makes one very formal, and the other has some latitude.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: It’s getting a little gray. This is something we could clarify more in the code now that we have the chance. Let’s go to the next slide — it’s going to talk about the formality we’re instituting here — and then if you all think that sounds great for our committees, we can talk about that.
Okay. So, affirming the advisory nature of you all versus what staff are doing. Meetings: most of the time this happens, but every once in a while topics come up that are not on the agenda. Now that you’ll be a more formal board under Open Meetings, you really can’t just start talking about other things — it needs to be what is on the agenda. This is a draft. If you all want to go a different direction, you can.
Some of the additional things we’re adding — I do think they’ll actually make this board more productive and make your role clearer, but may initially feel a little restrictive, and it’s not really intended to be. If you would like a future agenda item, you would make a request to your staff liaison saying “at a future meeting I want to talk about this,” and then that staff liaison coordinates with the chair. That’s an actual process. Why it works is it allows us to be prepared to give you a presentation on that, and allows us to make sure that item aligns with the role of CAB. CAB is very general, but there are certain things that could be outside your purview — it probably wouldn’t be appropriate, for example, for the planning commission to request we talk about parks programming.
Jeff [Member]: When you were bringing that up — you’re talking about adding something to the agenda for this group, not about our individual subcommittee meetings?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Right. Those things function completely informally right now. This CAB as the board is becoming more formal. An example would be requesting future agenda items.
Reports do not have to occur every meeting. They can if you’d like, but something the council requested — which will be a big change for you all — is that the committees would need to submit written reports. It doesn’t have to be super fancy, but the intent, I think, was that there is something submitted ahead of time so that everybody coming to the CAB meeting, before they get here, sort of knows what they’re going to hear about from arts or human services.
The other question that has come up a lot: how do these committees function through CAB? Do they just get to decide what they want to do and simply inform CAB, or do they actually need CAB to weigh in? We specifically asked the council about this. The code as written says that a committee meets — let’s say senior services wants to do a program — and then the whole group would kind of vote: yes, we agree; no, we don’t. We did ask the council: do you want to keep it how it’s written, where you ask and then the whole group votes? Or do you want to allow them to do what they’ve been doing now? The council said they want to keep it as it’s written — meaning a committee will say “our group met and we would like to do X,” and then the whole CAB discusses it and there would be a vote. That also connects back to the Robert’s Rules and formality, and the reporting that comes from the committee to the CAB would tee up that discussion about what the committee wants to do.
Victoria Andrews: Thank you. I don’t want to throw the arts committee under the bus here, but they’ve signed contracts for bands.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: No signed contracts. That’s actually a big part of this. They thought this was the type of group where they just entered into those, and that is not how this is structured. They did not. We’ve had a lot of conversations about it. They have not entered into any contracts — the city enters into them.
Jeff Crompe: Essentially they make recommendations to staff. I don’t think at any point — Char, Eddie, Bettina — I don’t think at any point we thought we were going to be issuing contracts or signing them. We were recommending, doing research, coming up with numbers. We came to you guys and said “here, we want these bands and here’s the price.” And then someone from the city — maybe it was Tara, maybe August — but I don’t think we ever thought we were signing on behalf of the city.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: There were growing pains. There was a lot of conversation about — the level of negotiation the arts committee wanted to have directly with vendors really should be a staff role. There was some stepping on toes — talking to bands about their price and negotiating. We’ve been trying to figure out that path.
Jeff Crompe: But once you have your report and you bring it back to the CAB, and the CAB votes on it and it goes to the city — that’s the process that’s being added in order to make this a functional committee. The confusing part still is we have a budget. We went out, we got bands, they all had different pricing. That’s where some confusion came in — are we supposed to, in the future: we’re already looking at bands for ’27. We’re not making any commitments, but we’re gathering information. When we decide “okay, we want these six bands for 2027” — are we supposed to come to the CAB and say “we’ve got these six bands, here are the prices,” and then CAB decides? Because we have a budget and we’ve been told we have a little bit of autonomy to spend our budget.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: I think we’re struggling with the term “vote.” I think it’s more about a motion and a second — a motion means “I have interest in something” and a second means “I also have interest in it.” You bring it to the table: this is what we’re proposing. Jeff would make a motion, anyone else who agrees would second it, and then it’s open for discussion. You can explain yourself. Barring anything extraordinary — like a million dollars for a band — you’re in your committee, that’s your area, and everyone appreciates everything you do. I think what it is, is just clarity on how you get from A to B to C.
[Member]: You have a little budget. How you are proposing to use that budget — that’s what happens in the committee. That’s what comes back to the CAB. Those are your parameters. You bring that to the CAB. That doesn’t mean you go out and hire somebody for a million dollars and see if the CAB will vote for it. It’s your salary cap, if you will — you’re John Schneider trying to figure out how to fit everybody.
Charlene [Member]: I want to bring more clarity to this. One, we were green — all of us on our committee. We were told “you get to pick the bands,” so we took steps to do so. We did a mix of prices and recommendations from our community. We took that to the city, the city negotiated, and then by the time it came to the CAB — a month later — we said “we’ve got the bands,” and everyone said yes. We did go through the process appropriately.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: This group’s been functioning for a little over a year. Everyone at some point has told me what is and is not working. It is a good thing, a year in, to be like “let’s make sure the code is accurately reflecting things and addressing the concerns we’re hearing.” This is not a punitive thing. It is actually meant to help. And just because you see something in here doesn’t mean you weren’t doing it before. I apologize if that’s the message, because that is not at all what I’m intending.
Bettina [Member]: In reference to reporting back to council — is it expected that each committee or subcommittee report to a city council meeting?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: No. Report to the CAB.
Bettina [Member]: Oh, okay. I heard it wrong. And only if that committee or subcommittee has something to report.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: It won’t be required if nobody has anything. Yes.
[Member]: In general principle, each of these subcommittees is made up of people who uniformly have expertise in the area they’ve selected. With that wisdom and knowledge, they come to you with the absolute best choices that can be made. To bring it to a larger body to hash out why those choices were made, I think isn’t really very productive. Health and human services — their role, their decision. Out of due respect, I would just say “whatever they said” because in principle I would never have given them that body of work. If I’m going to weigh in, I have to know more about it, which I don’t want to know the intimate details of — because I’m on that committee over there and that’s what I have to know about.
I think there’s the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The letter of the law says the council wants everything to go back to the CAB for approval. The spirit of the law, for me, is that should just be “everybody agrees with that team” — because at the end of the day they’re the experts. They’ve done their homework.
Now, on the arts committee — there had been a formal process the city had for selecting bands. People submitted their bands. That got dropped at some point. So that’s where we ended up, and now we’re back to having a formal process for picking the trucks and so on. Once people apply, it goes back to the arts committee, and we pick from that bigger lot. A process in the middle — anyone come, calling all trucks, calling all vendors — helps gather the information. But it’s the arts committee that should say “these are the top ones we believe will be of most interest to our community.”
When we bring it back to the CAB, the CAB should essentially trust us that we’ve done our homework — we’ve created a process, we’ve spent hours going through these selection processes, interviewing them, finding out the rates. To bring it back to the CAB for another long conversation isn’t very useful. Even though the letter of the law says we must, the spirit of the law is just a sniff test and a rubber stamp. However you write it up, that’s how I’m going to operate.
Karen [Member]: Isn’t this body supposed to be part of a review process — to make sure the committees have covered all their bases? Not in great detail, not in expertise, but just to make sure it meets the criteria that the CAB has for committees to make their decisions. I’m not looking to pick apart what you do. I’m looking to make sure you met the criteria of the CAB for making these decisions, because they’re financial decisions.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: What you just described is what is in the code. Because the committees meet informally — no agendas, not recorded — they operate with no transparency unless there is reporting out at CAB. And the code says exactly what Karen just said. You present what you’re doing, there are maybe some questions, and then there’s a general yes. So if people are comfortable with what Karen said, that’s what’s in there.
Charlene [Member]: Our committee does do an agenda.
Aileen Evans [Senior Services]: Back to the arts and booking concerts. By the time you do all this work, you’re getting information, you can’t do that date but can do this one, this guy’s got that one open — and then if you wait a month to come back here and you can’t secure that band, you run into trouble. Maybe there could be something written where there are exceptions to the rule depending on time frame.
Bettina [Member]: These meetings can go on forever, and you guys could have spent 40 hours on this and it needs to be done right now. Then to come in and explain all of it because everyone’s asking every single question — there’s something with the time frame that might become a problem in the future.
Jeff Crompe: A lot of what Aileen just mentioned — with booking anything, if you wanted to book Climate Pledge Arena next month, you probably wouldn’t get it. If you wanted to book it next year, you could. That’s part of what precipitated this. It wouldn’t be until about this time of year that the call would go out — anyone who wants to be a band for our summer concerts, bring it in. But we’re talking about 90–120 days out. That’s why we wanted to get the bands tied up by the end of December. And it’s our intention to do that again this year.
Some of the scrutiny on some of the things we’ve done — as Charlene said and everyone’s admitted — when this all started last year, we were just kind of throwing things out. It was kind of “here you go, committee, go do stuff.” And we were doing things and later found out the city didn’t like the exact way we were doing it — but we didn’t know what we didn’t know.
And unlike some of the other committees — nothing against you guys, don’t take this wrong — I haven’t seen human services have to stand up and say “we’re going to contract with Southeast Kids and give them x amount of money.” With the bands, we’ve been pretty transparent with how we were operating. Our stuff is a little more visible.
There’s been a lot of mistakes made on both parts, but they were unknowing on both parts, too. There was one of the national bands where the contracts were delayed getting out in November and December, and they said “hey, if we don’t get this tied up soon, I’m going to have to let it go.” We wouldn’t have gotten things done. Delays can cause things to fall through.
Lisa France: I just wanted to say thank you, arts committee, for spending all that time putting the concerts together. A lot of my friends and neighbors were really looking forward to them. Thank you for having the foresight to start the process early.
Victoria Andrews: Katherine, as you’ve listened to this discussion, is there a way to resolve the timeliness issue?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: In that case, Jeff and Char did meet with us and we did get them under contract, so it was fine. There was one stumble where a thing didn’t get out because of a paperwork issue, but I was not aware we were your holdup.
[Member]: I think I’m addressing Aileen’s concern mostly — about time frames and missing the boat. What I interpreted tonight was: “here are the bands, we go to the city, and then we have to come back, get a vote, and the CAB has to approve what we just did” — and that’s where the delay and confusion comes in.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: This is something we specifically asked the council and they provided direction. I don’t know — do any of you all want to comment? We’re bringing this to you so we can get feedback. We’re bringing it before the first reading to have this conversation.
Jim [Member]: For the timeliness thing — if we know that to get the bands we want we have to do it by December, that means we’ve got to get it on the CAB agenda by December. And if that’s not going to work, we’ve got to get it on the earlier one. It drives the sequence of agendas that city staff can put together.
[Deputy Mayor]: When you’re putting on an event, when do you start planning next year’s event? The next day. This is putting a time element into the whole process — don’t wait until the last minute, just get in the process. There’s no blame here. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to do this so we can adhere to those deadlines.
Bill Linscott: The nomenclature we’re using around “approval” out of this board — I view this more as all these committees bringing forward recommendations based on the work they’ve done. When we look at those recommendations, I think our criteria for endorsing them are more along the lines of: did you meet your primary constraints, like did you stay within budget with your bands? And the answer is yes. After that, it goes forward.
I think what we’re getting around to is we need to recognize that the only ones who can commit the city are the city, and that’s after approvals from the council depending on dollar amounts. So let’s keep things in a terminology of proposals and endorsements, and stay away from detailed approvals. Meanwhile, go do your work, bring them forward, and we ought to be looking at the overarching things like “does it meet budget” — and after that, go for it.
Charlene [Member]: Jeff, you have to start in November. Bring your recommendations to CAB in November.
Jeff Crompe: Our recommendations, yes. But it’s not until the city approves that recommendation. The process as Katherine described would be: you guys decide “we want these bands,” then bring that in a written recommendation to the CAB before you talk to city staff, really. The committee goes “yeah, we think those are great bands, you’re within your budget, perfect.” And then Katherine listens, gets that information to where it needs to go, and you can start contracting and reaching out to the bands.
In retrospect, that’s kind of what we did do. We did bring a list to the body almost every month while we were in the process. There was just never a formal vote — but yeah. It’s all a learning experience. The committee’s not in trouble. I’m just trying to get the process down.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Coming in cold to this group — some of this is also just transactional. I don’t think anyone here is going to question how you decided on those groups. If someone here were extremely opposed to country music, fine, please explain your selection. But otherwise, that’s not what it is. It’s for transparency — so you can go back and look at these bands being selected, a motion was seconded, there was an amendment, one band hadn’t committed yet. It’s more of a transactional paper trail to see how we got there. It’s not questioning your decisions. It’s showing how it got there. And again, CAB decides, but you’re all here because you’re experts in your field. CAB is making sure it’s by the code, by the ordinance, within the budget — and then after that, it goes on to council. Having that paper trail is helpful.
Jeff [Member]: I’m going to wrap up by just saying: I think we need to have “new business” on our agenda so timely and relevant topics can be brought up. Also some sort of time frame in which agenda recommendations need to be given so we have the public notification system. We need to know that timing. And lastly, there are things that are going to come up that need to be handled by the city — like sponsorships. Great idea, but the city has to do that. And whether the city is even prepared to do that, who would they accept money from? We would love to do grants. We’ve got a really cool program we want to do this fall. Does the city need to do that? We’re going to keep running into these little things that we have to work through. Putting the processes into place is what’s going to eventually help us.
Out of respect — at least for my sense of it — if this committee or that committee or another committee recommends something, I’m going to sniff it. I might have a relevant question, but in the spirit of “you’ve done all that work, you’re the experts” — I’m not going to tear it apart. I’m basically going to say “yeah, that sounds great.”
Jeff Crompe: I want everyone to understand there’s no hard feelings here at all. We hit the ground running without any guidelines and there were a lot of frustrating growing pains. We had to work through those, and yeah, there probably were a little bit of hard feelings at certain times — but that’s all in the past. We’ve learned quite a bit and I expect that 2026 will go a lot smoother.
We’re still looking for some of that guidance from you guys — like for the sponsorship stuff. How could that work? I think that’s a revenue source — whether it’s for the arts committee or for the city. There are people who would put their banners up at the concerts and pay to have that done — whether it’s a Ford dealership, a beer vendor, a landscaping company. We have some revenue opportunities I don’t want us to miss. So yeah — no hard feelings, Katherine.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: All right. So who wants to go tomorrow? Who wants to present? Let these fine people know how you feel.
[Member]: I’m generally fine with it. She would like support.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: Bettina is usually at the council meetings anyway.
Charlene [Member]: I would like to nominate Victoria.
Victoria Andrews: I would like someone else to carry that.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: Honestly, there are less people at council meetings than there are here tonight. So it’s actually a little bit easier.
[Member]: Couple of things to add to the discussion if we’re looking at the wording in the municipal code. As I understand it, there’s nine neighborhood representatives — one from each — then two business owners, one marina tenant, and then eleven at large. That could be 23 people. The subcommittees say you have a minimum of three but a maximum of nine, and there are three subcommittees, so that comes out to 27. But there are only 23 to choose from.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: That’s essentially correct. The committee members have to come from the CAB, so there could only be 23. We allowed up to nine, so maybe there are five in one and nine in a different one. They all couldn’t have 27 because there aren’t that many people on the CAB. And as for the at-large members, the code is written that we’re going to try to get a geographic and demographic spread of representation. If the council sees that all 11 are from one area, they probably aren’t going to approve them all. And we wanted that goal of demographic and geographic representation.
Mary Ellen [Member]: Sorry, I wanted to take a minute to let the arts committee know how much I appreciated the work you did last year. I went to all of the concerts. I loved every single one of them, even though there were different genres of music.
Jeff Crompe: Glad you loved it. Just wait till this year.
Bettina [Member]: Lastly, regarding attendance — does it begin from the time this gets approved by the city council?
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: Yes.
Bettina [Member]: Because I inadvertently missed last time.
Victoria Andrews: I have a question. Not agreeing to be the person that does this, mind you — but what exactly are we supposed to be telling you tomorrow? Because the only thing that I personally would want to report — speaking only for me, not everybody — is that I would like the council to change the language on the CAB from “subcommittee” to “committee.” That’s the only thing I would want to bring to you. We had a great discussion. That’s the only thing I would like to bring forward.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: Do we have a motion?
[Member]: It’s been moved and seconded.
Robin Desimone [Council Member]: I think the nature of the request was if you had anything you were not satisfied with — what has been changed, or is about to be changed, or will now be the law. If there’s anything you’d like to ask the council tomorrow, and if the only thing is “sub” — if that’s not the case, I think we’re fine because it will move forward. Unless there was something sticking tonight that you wanted to get off your chest tomorrow, I think we’re there.
Victoria Andrews: I greatly appreciate the fact that you were trying to honor what has been requested in the past. However, I think we have beaten this to death. It’s time to put it to bed. I totally approve of this and want to see it go forward as is. The subcommittee thing, we can take care of that — we don’t necessarily have to take care of that tomorrow.
Harry Steinmets [Chair]: Is there any more discussion or debate on committee versus subcommittee and reporting? Do we understand that the motion from the CAB is to report to the council that they would like to be known as committees — the Arts Committee, the Senior Services Committee, the Human Services Committee — not subcommittees. That is the motion.
I’m going to call for a vote. All those in favor signify by raising your hand. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously.
[Member]: And Aileen would like to continue beating the dead horse.
Aileen Evans [Senior Services]: Something came up before — when the votes were being placed for the planning commissioners, it was noted that if just one person did not vote for anyone who was interested in being on the planning commission if they were on CAB, they were immediately seen as disqualified in that person’s respect. And it would be nice, maybe in the future, that a CAB member would not automatically be disqualified from applying for another commission or board.
Katherine Caffrey [City Manager]: I think it was that that council person’s criteria for who they were voting for was: if that person was already involved in any appointed board of the city, they weren’t going to vote for them on the planning commission. So it was even broader than the CAB. That’s that council person’s criteria — they get to choose that, they’re announcing it to the city, and that’s what they base their vote on. So it wasn’t a disqualification in terms of eligibility. It was a disqualification for that particular council person’s vote, and they get to choose. We cannot dictate that to a council member.
Bettina [Member]: Along the same clarification, I believe that was because that person believed that if you signed up for something you should fulfill your term as you had originally agreed. But we’re talking about one council member’s reasons for doing it, and that’s not really any motion before us.
[Member]: You were on the senior committee — other people were on committees — once the CAB was reestablished. Remember, there are all new terms. People got two and four-year terms. So it was irrelevant, in my opinion.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: I think we have completed that. Are there any subcommittee or committee reports?
Karen [Member] [Human Services]: Human services. We’ve been in the process of looking at doing a resource guide and we’re going to coordinate that with the website. In the meantime, committee members have been researching 988, 211, and 411, and we’re going to bring that information together along with other information to help develop that resource guide. The grant process is also open and we’ll be working on that over the next few months and bringing our recommendations to the CAB. We’re also looking at maybe doing a needs assessment. Lots of great work ahead. Thank you.
Aileen Evans [Senior Services]: I have the meeting minutes that were typed out, so I’ll just skip around. As far as attendance, Aileen, Susan, and Alyson were there. Kim Payne with Community Enrichment attended as a guest, and Joanne Hayden, a former senior services member, was at the end and commented on some things.
As far as membership, Alyson — welcome — she came to the last one and would like to join us. Susan is reaching out to Redondo community because there’s an opening, as I understand it. I reached out to Woodmont and I do have somebody who is very interested and will be putting in an application.
We talked about a couple of programs. A Des Moines historical project — let’s call it a traveling history. The proposal is for hopefully a yearly event where seniors would have a booth and talk to the public about their long-term residency, or bring artifacts and discuss how they relate to the many years they’ve been residents within the city. Maybe try to do it when there’s another event going on — so, after one of the concerts, people might stop by the community building and check it out. We’re targeting 2027 because there’s a lot of planning involved.
The other thing is a program called “Post Scripts” — where school students with community service hours due to their curriculum would sit down and interview seniors who have been residents here for a long period of time and gather stories. Either it could be in the city manager’s report once a month as a little blurb, or if there’s room in the magazine or brochure, we could do something like that.
Alyson is also contacting the school district to try to set up an intergenerational program where they would bring arts to seniors — because they don’t have arts in the district now, so it would be a great addition. Joanne, who was piping in at the end and is a prior school teacher, wants to do a program where she does reading with kids. Kim with Community Enrichment mentioned that would be best as a school district project so the city has no liability.
The program where students would interview seniors might be a co-partnership where we find the seniors for them to interview, but it might not be a city program — possibly a curriculum the school has to do anyway. The less we have to do, the more time is open to do more things. I think that wraps it up. Thank you.
Jeff Crompe [Arts Committee]: Real quick — we have these posters now that you’ll start seeing around town. There’s actually one as far away as downtown Bellevue. Katherine and AJ had Alex on staff put this together and it came out really nice. We had them printed and we’ve got ones this size, bigger ones, and even double-sided ones — I put one up today at Art Turos so you can see it from the inside and outside.
We also submitted a list to the city for food trucks that we were recommending, and that’s being vetted now. Courtney had put a thing out on Facebook soliciting food vendors and bands — for the Fourth of July and food vendors, but that could trickle over to us. We’re still going to be having our video contest in the fall. And as I said, we’re working on bands for next year already.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: All right. Anything for the good of the order? Do I have a motion?
[Member]: I move to adjourn.
Harry Steinmetz [Chair]: Moved and seconded. All those in favor say I. I. All opposed. Thank you. We are done.
1This is a machine-generated transcript generated on the fly by Google/Youtube/AI. Accuracy totally not guaranteed. Provided only as a convenience and to help people with disabilities. Caveat lector!